Ironically Un-Cool

Friends, I had not received a jury summons for this month. Which I told him, at which point his previously clear diction suddenly turned into a rapid mumble, only becoming clear for scary words like 'federal' and then asking to confirm my address, at which point I hung up and decided to call the police department later.

When I called the police department the desk officer sounded so tired y'all. All I had to say was "Hey I got a call earlier saying I missed jury duty this morning?" and she immediately sighed and told me that yes it was a scam that was going around and thanked me for calling to confirm.

So this is your periodic reminder that law enforcement agencies will not call you to tell you that you're in trouble. If you need to pay a fine of some sort they will mail you a physical invoice. Anyone calling you saying they're from the police or any other law enforcement organization (up to the CIA and yes I have heard of scammers attempting to impersonate CIA agents over the phone) who then tries to get financial information from you over the phone is a scammer.

For ANY "important" call you actually think might be real, get the name of the agency or institution involved, (and here is the important part:) look up the phone number to that agency or institution on your own, and call back about it.

If you never use a phone number they give you and always look up the number on your own, they can never scam you. Here's how it looks.

"hi, i'm from your bank and your account has just been charged, just, so much money, we're worried it might be fraud."

"Thank you for letting me know, I'll call back later, goodbye"

Then i look up my bank's phone number, and call that number, and tell them i received a call about suspicious activity on my account.

If it's real, they'll help me with it, and if it's not they'll confirm it's not true. Either way, i know i'm talking to the actual bank and not a scammer.

After almost a decade on this site, I found another Tumblr user in the wild. I stopped to tie my shoe with rainbow laces this morning outside the silversmith at Colonial Williamsburg, and I heard it.

“I like your shoelaces.”

Oh. Oh no.

I responded the only way I could. “Thanks.” And then I reluctantly added, “I stole them from the president…and if that makes sense to you, I’m very sorry.”

The poor man, in full Colonial dress, stared at me for a long moment. And then burst into laughter. And said, “I haven’t thought about that in YEARS and this has never happened to me before.”

Yeah. Me neither. Not until today.

i havent stopped thinking about this tiktok and wanted it on my blog

[VD: A TikTok from @/soupygarbagejuice. It starts with a clip captioned "Biggest Croissant In Malaysia", of a waiter bringing out a large plate with a massive croissant on it out to a woman at a table. Voiceover says "Today I wanted to eat a Croissant–". A man stitches the video, greenscreened over the final frame. Transcript is as follows:

"A few months ago, this was the last TikTok I saw before falling asleep, and I didn't dream about croissants, I didn't dream about her. Every single dream that I had for a while took place in a reality where Billy Joel– one of Billy Joel's greatest hits was called 'The Biggest Croissant in Malaysia'. It just existed, it played on the radio, people would talk about it in the background, 'He played it at The Garden last night'! So at one point I woke up and did my best to recreate exactly what it sounded like in the dreams. [Singing over piano and drums] She ordered the biggest croissant in Malaysia! She ordered the biggest croissant in town, cause Daddy's not around anymore! He's in Singapore, he's in Singapore!"